Chromosome Stories: How Scientists Tracked Radiation Risk after Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chromosome Stories is about scientists who strived to track radiation risk after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Specifically, I am interested in cytogeneticists and epidemiologists, who devoted their careers to investigating chromosomes—key biological entities—drawn from the hibakusha, the atomic-bomb survivors. I consider the experiences of these scientists who studied chromosomes, the technologies and infrastructure that facilitated the studies, the complex relationship between the hibakusha and the scientists, as well as the broader community in which the research outcomes shaped the policy and practice of radiation protection. I follow hibakusha chromosomes in their journey across time and space: from the moment they were stored as blood samples in the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC)—later re-institutionalized as the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF)—in Japan, to their trips overseas decades later to be compared with chromosomes from other populations exposed to radiation. As I demonstrate, chromosomes reveal much more than the internal working of the ABCC and RERF, or the development of the cytogenetics as a field of scientific inquiry. I use the hibakusha chromosomes to contextualize the cytogenetic labor at the ABCC/RERF and the aspiration of scientists in the larger history of the atomic age; to highlight the complex relationship between diplomacy and science; to shed light on the extensive global infrastructure of radiobiology as a response to emerging geopolitical risks; and to consider the forms of power and violence that are inextricably linked to the work of science. All in all, this is an exploration of how extreme violence with unique biological consequences became an opportunity and resource for scientific advancement, and the implication of such a story to our understanding of science, ethics, and social justice.